Sham London 2012 Olympics Scandal Leads to Trojan

07

Aug

2012

Cybercriminals are known to take advantage of sporting events like the London Olympics 2012 for their malicious activities. Some of the attacks that leveraged this event include fake live streaming websites, fraudulent sites that sell bogus tickets, and malicious Olympics-related app hosted in a fake Google Play store.

Adding to the list of attacks using the ongoing Games as bait, Trend Micro researchers spotted spammed messages that supposedly contain news on a supposed scandal involving US gymnast Gabrielle Douglas. This is used as bait to lure users into clicking the malicious URL contained in these messages. Once unsuspecting users click the link, they are redirected to a fake YouTube page, requiring victims to download the latest version of Adobe Flash Player to view the said video.

The spammed message contains different compromised URLs, but all leads to the download of the file adobe-flashplayer-update.exe, which Trend Micro detects as TROJ_DROPPR.HR.

Trend Micro protects users from this spam run via its Smart Protection NetworkT, detecting and blocking the malicious file and spam. Use caution when opening email messages. Refrain from clicking links on messages, specially from unknown senders. To get your updates on Olympics-related news, we recommend using legitimate news sites, accessed via your own bookmarks.